The Cubs have a new front-line starter and top-tier manager, a slew of elite prospects, and money to spend. The front office has a plan, and the division is in decline. So stop talking about building a future contender, North Siders. The playoff run begins now.

It’s July, and news is slow, so we had to share the joy here. This morning, we discovered that a quick Getty Images search reveals that Carmelo Anthony has spent the entire offseason modeling different hats. Did you know Carmelo wants to start his own hat line?

Do you remember being surprised about the velocity of the interest spike in last summer’s first Sharknado film? How quickly it went from “thing I am going to watch and tweet about, to the increasing dismay of my family and colleagues,” to “thing everyone, everywhere is suddenly and virulently obsessed with, up to and including my priest, gynecologist, and mailman”? Right, so this summer the preoccupation with the sequel is churning up interest good and early, and has whipped a number of brands into an insane promotional tizzy. We’ve been counting down to this sucker since we had to count it in weeks; now that we can count in hours, we present a salute to its corporate excesses.

Now that Arsenal finally have the economic horsepower to compete for world-class players in the transfer market, it’s going to be less and less likely that hyped kids make it to the senior team. So let’s take a moment to remember the young guns who, for one reason or another, never lived up to their prodigious hype.

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